I'm a songwriter and I find the argument that if you're okay with giving music away for free then you must hate musicians bizarre. The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that music existed millennia before the music industry did. People who want to make music will make music, no matter how much money they've got. And it's a great time to do it, too, since recording music and getting feedback is such a cheap and easy process, thanks to the internet and open source software. I'm very much in the 'music should be free' camp, for the mere fact that part of the buzz of creating it comes from the idea that you are somehow enriching people's lives. Demanding money for it makes me feel awkward, and frankly, if you don't want someone to hear your music unless they pay you a tenner then you're a crap artist.

Now having listened to your music do you not feel you would benefit greatly from having some much better equipment and probably a professional studio tech to fix all the levels on your recordings? That shit costs money, which comes from .......

You might even be able to afford more than just pizza to eat, improve that diet a bit.

It probably would, but that's due to limitations in my production abilities. The quality of my own music is neither here nor there. I've come across plenty of musicians online who are great producers and don't have much better equipment than me, if it's better at all. In fact, my housemate is an incredible producer and were you to hear his stuff you wouldn't realise it was recorded in his bedroom. All this stuff is only ever going to get easier, too.

The way I see it, we're at a time where the industry doesn't need to exist anymore. I like to think of it like this: as I understand it, before recorded music you would get folk songs. People would visit places and hear songs and pass them on to people in their home towns. Because people heard different music, there was more interesting conversation about music than today when everyone hears generally the same things. I think the internet is the next step back to this because there is so much variety, so many podcasts, radio stations, websites and means to listen to music that exist outside of the industry, that we won't all be listening to the same thing, and we'll be able to show each other what we've heard and it'll be exciting.

I think the point I'm trying to get to here is, how did you pay for the equipment you did use to make it? How much would it cost for better equipment? Being a professional musician means having equipment to do it with, where I get confused is how you pay for it.

I actually listen to a lot of music on BandCamp and download stuff from there on the pay-what-you like model, a lot of stuff has a minimum price which is fine.

Well up until earlier this year I used mainly crap computers that had been handed down, which was a bit of a nightmare because they always die eventually. Guitars and stuff I saved up for and bought a few years ago, but now I've got a nice new computer and a new amp. I mean, how did I pay for it? I saved up, put money aside, and most notably, got a job. I was unemployed for a long time so I know it's easier said than done but basically, I paid for it by living the same life as everyone that isn't a rock star lives. I find it an odd notion that it's somehow unfair on the tiny percentage of musicians who can actually make a living off it, since I've heard loads of acts that I much prefer to the majority of stuff you hear on the radio. Everyone has their own tastes, so it seems weird that you've got this model that decides what is worth showing the masses and what isn't.

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